I really could not avoid reading this book. Being at Syracuse University where Trevor Noah is one of the main actors of support for diversity (they hired him or he is volunteering or some combination), every student receives a free edition of his book “Born a Crime” (his birth was crime back then, literally). Then, when I was in South Africa, I knew I had to read the book when I am back. So I did. Having seen the country and its unique role in world history from first hand helped me fill in the missing parts of my imagination of the stories he tells in his book. When he talks about townships and describes them as South African style ghettos, I don’t have to make them up, because I have seen them. When he describes the different races and skin colours, black, coloured, white, Zulu, Xhosa and so on I don’t have to imagine the people, because I have seen them. When he talks about the rich people in South Africa and how they don’t care about the rest of the people and hide behind walls with electrical fences, I don’t need to come up with a fictions picture, I have been, I have talked to them.

The book is definitely unique in many ways. You can feel the Trevor in it through and through. Correct punctuation is of secondary interest, getting Trevor’s style of story-telling across to the readers is primary concern, and it works. The book might as well be a transcript of a late night with some drinks in a bar with Trevor, his friends and most importantly his mom. His mom is the main character in this book really. She is a tough, tough lady and one has a feeling she might be one of a kind all of South Africa. She lived her life during apartheid as if apartheid did not really exist. She fought a system in the ways most people don’t even dare thinking about. It was risky, many, many times things went sideways. Like literally, for example when they jumped out of a bus with people that we’re going to kill them. They jumped out of the van sideways to escape.

It is just one of many great stories in this book that seems so unbelievable that, when they are combined with Trevor’s incredibly funny story-telling almost make them look made up. But they are not. There are about 17 chapters and all chapters built up to the last one. You could really just read the last chapter and it would explain a lot to you. But you would miss the great stories in the 16 chapters before. Stories about growing up in South Africa, apartheid, the townships ghettos, school in South Africa, his entrepreneurial spirit and his relationship to his Swiss father.

If you do make your way to South Africa, instead of taking the travel book, you might want to read Trevor’s book instead. You will probably learn as much about the country as in many other tour guides. The real South Africa by real people.

Due to the great generosity of the people at the 2019 Machine Learning Summer School in South Africa, I was able to attend two weeks of amazing lectures on all things machine learning. On top of all of that I also got see many parts of South Africa, get to know the people, their history and the culture. I also made many new friends (Hi there if you’re reading this!).

Let’s go through it day by day:

Day 1: Take off (6th of January)I have a 11 hour flight in front of me. I am very lucky having got a seat in premium economy. I also accidentally used the business class toilet which is right in front. I was surprised there were so many freebies, so I took all of them, one each. When I got out, the business people started at me angrily when I walked back to my seat. It’s a good start to an 11 hour flight.

I met a very nice lady sat next to me. She has been travelling to South Africa for almost 30 years and I could not ask for a better introduction to a country I did not do much research on at all. We even end up going on a Sunday trip down towards the Cape of Good Hope!

Day 2: The First Real Day

I just woke up and had some breakfast. The view outside is nice. I only got 3 hours of sleep I think, so I am already looking forward to my bed tonight. I still don’t know where I will be staying! Also, last night I passed Yaoundé, my brother in law’s hometown.

We are going to land very soon and then I will rush to the first lecture. The lady sitting next to me wants to share a taxi there which is great! I am landing at 7.50am so 10 minutes before the introduction. I end up being a bit late, but at least I maximised my time with family back in Munich!

The day went by rather slowly, because I was so tired. At 3pm I had a serious low, almost falling asleep thrice, so I just bought a coffee. It works wonders when you are not used to it!

​The last event was the panel on causality, so I had some questions prepared. I had my hand raised from the first minute to the last but being seated so far to the off-side the microphone people just did not see me. The panel itself was interesting and gave me a lot of confidence in the direction of my reserach, because they were all quite open about how they also themselves do not have a clear direction for many of their research endeavours.

Academia is a very weird place. Many people here are slightly socially awkward, but there also some show offs dressed in brand clothing, leather shoes and literally swinging their rental car keys around to make sure everyone knows they make lots of grant money. It seems all a bit of a circus at the moment and I am missing genuine interaction, but I am sure I’ll eventually filter through the noise! I will also definitely skip some sessions. I can’t do two weeks of sitting in a windowless room from 8:30 to 6. No one can.

Day 3, 8th Jan: Getting into the rhythm

We got picked up in the morning at 8am from our temporary hostel stay for the sponsored attendants. I had a burger the night before at a small restaurant that which was quite nice. It was the second day of lesson and it was my favourite set of lessons! I also got seats in the middle which gave me a better view of things and did not have to break my neck!

Water resources here are super low. The government has started measures to reduce water usage and apparently it has halved over the last year which is impressive because it seems like it did not have any big impact on daily life. They have water faucets that spray instead of run like a waterfall which doesn’t make much difference for washing hands but saves so much water! To take a bath you also have to get the plug from the reception and explain to them why you need a bath. Really nice to see that societies can adapt if they want to.

Eventually I also meet my new roommate who, probably not by chance, is German. We got dinner at the restaurant, which is really nice! It is also quite cheap, like 4£ for a burger! Finally, I went to bed early to have enough sleep for gym in the morning.

Day 4, 9thI got up 6ish o clock and went to the gym, rowing 30 minutes. I had breakfast on the way back and the fruit selection is amazing. Then quickly into the shower and get ready for the next lectures. There are about three fish lectures on causality and people seem to get really excited about. I was going to go swimming but I still felt quite ill all day. A Capitec Bank employee, one of the sponsors, was nice enough to drive me to a mall to buy a SIM card which is great! So I finally could properly use the internet, yay!

In the evening, I ordered a pizza, eating it some other attendants at the evening restaurant.

Day 5, 10thI had not enough sleep to do early gym so I moved it to lunch time. I did get gym into my schedule before lunch and met a student from Cameroonian at lunch! I spend all afternoon writing my ACM essay, submitted it and then went straight to dinner with another attendant I met who I will go with on a safari next weekend most likely!

Dinner was delicious. Now I am back in the room and probably will do some life admin. It never stops.

Day 6, 11th JanToday was Friday and everyone was looking forward to the weekend. Friday. Friday. Gotta catch my friends, we are going to Cape Town tomorrow!

I went to the first lecture but my cold still got me down quite a bit. I went back to my room after late morning coffee snacks and submitted some stuff and had a call. I came back for the two causal inference sessions at 3pm, but everyone was already so sleepy.

Right when it had ended it started raining so I waited a bit with some people then walked back to my room. No gym or swimming today.

Day 7, 12th Jan

Today was excursion day! We got a bus to Waterfront in Cape Town and people there could decide to do whatever they wanted. The bus drivers that got us to cape Town and also were going to bring us back were nice enough to drive some people to Table Mountain. So my friend Ayush and I then said we wanted to go to the city centre. So they offered to drive us there as well, after dropping off the others at the Cableway to Table Mountain. Ergo, we got a free ride around Cape Town! The view as stunning, but because I actually went to Table Mountain the next week, I will skip this part.

Inside Cape Town we walked through a park there which also has a statue with Cecil Rhodes who is a very controversial figure in the history of Africa. He also set up a scholarship at Oxford. Lots of explosive material! I also introduced Ayush to geocaching and we fortunately also did find the first geocache we headed for. We then went into a museum on a district which was declared “all white” sometime in the 1960s. Apparently, there was a time when the government used to do that. They lady giving the tour was apparently a real life survivor of that part of history. Her mother died of “heartbreak” the moment she had lost a 20 year fight to keep her home. She also has 11 siblings which is unimaginable for Europeans. We had some overpriced snacks across the street and then just went exploring, no GPS whatsoever.

Straight away, we stumbled upon an alley which had all cuisine of the world — crossed with Indian food: Indian-Chinese, Indian-Turkish. It was hilarious and Ayush, a native Indian himself, had to taste a lot of it. He got so much we packed it up for the homeless, but the first guy we meet took both boxes and did not share with the guy next to him. That was quite an experience. So we kept walking. The city centre is quite run down and they have “city policy” everywhere, because of all the crazies around there.

We eventually ended up in the business district where it was just skyscrapers and empty streets. We headed back to the Castle to meet the others via the train stations which was surprisingly new. There was not a single white person using the trains which is what we had been told before about already. So we moved on, past the makeshift bus station and eventually ended up a the Castle of Good Hope, an hour early. The tour there was very well done and interactive.

While others had their dinner at 7ish, I took an Uber to see a friend my father. She was really nice and had her University friends for a BBQ over. There were about 25 people and apparently most of them were involved in a nature protection society back then. I had good chats about bioinformatics, machine learning and philosophy of science. A friend of her then drove me home, where we witnessed the tour bus take off the fence in front of the hotel as a last act of the evening!

Day 8, 13th Jan

I was going to go on a hike, but I had to rest my foot and I was also still a bit ill. I had had a call from the lady that sat next to me on the plane, and she offered a small tour. I called her back and so I was on for a drive-around for the afternoon. First, we went to a bi-weekly antiquity garage sale, where I got Irene something nice and then we went on to Kalk Bay where we had some fish-and-chips style food: I obviously ordered calamari! I learned a lot about the 30 years of visits they have done to South Africa. Quite impressive.

Day 9, 14th Jan

Just lectures really

Day 10, 15th Jan

Also just lectures I think

Day 11, 16th Jan

Impromptu Table Mountain Trip!

Some people decided to get an Uber to table mountain which is 1 whole hour away! A taxi for an hour! But because there was 6 of us, we were able to cut the costs to 10€ per head for a return trip which is very impressive. The cableway itself was twice as expensive, but very worth it. On top, we talked around a very well maintained set of paths and saw magnificent views!

We found two geocaches, also the most visited geocache of Africa which is super cool. So I have both the most visited in Canada and Africa now.

We then watched the sunset and went back. Nothing big from then onwards …

Day 11, 17th Jan

Dinner in the evening at Super Expensive Golf Club

Day 12, 18th Jan

People left fairly fast after the last lecture. It got very empty on the hotel grounds. I went to the gym and has some dinner eventually! I also gave my new friends one of the little torches I got, and they loved it. But I feel like it only leaves a mark when you know the people. Torches for stranger apparently does not work that well.

Day 13, 19th Jan

Rafael, who I meet at the conference, and I started our Trip to the safari place. We stopped first in Stellenbosch to buy some present. I got some slingshots and then went on to a jewellery place where the founder is apparently a very distance cousin of my mother. The lady at the counter did seem to know the story I told her my father had send me so that was good fun to surprise people that way!

We then drove 2 hours east to the reserve which is basically just a resort in the middle of nowhere with a massive walk or rather drive in zoo. The food was good! We then relaxed a bit at the pool before our first safari tour. It was just a massive zoo. It’s nice, but it is a one time thing! We got back and exercised a bit, and I swam some laps. But I did realise that I had not given my brain a break in years. A literal break from work. Just do nothing. Not do something for the sake of a goal, but just do something for fun. Even my travel trips had turned into checklists lately which is short term fulfilling, but it is not a break. So I learned that and that is good!

Day 14, 20th Jan

We had an early morning safari but it was a drag really. Breakfast was okay and we were back on the road. A friend of my father recommended a different route which had a really nice view over the West Cape area and then we also went to recommend wine estate called “Spice Route” where I got some nice gifts. We then went straight to the Hotel.

"AI is currently split. First, there are those who are intoxicated by the success of machine learning and deep learning and neural nets. They don’t understand what I’m talking about. They want to continue to fit curves. But when you talk to people who have done any work in AI outside statistical learning, they get it immediately. I have read several papers written in the past two months about the limitations of machine learning." Judea Pearl

I have been following Judea Pearl's work and I am excited to finally see him publish a book on this topic. I have been observing these issues at the lower end of machine learning for years now and it is amazing to see someone at the very top confirm them in this book.

This summer, I will be starting a research reading group as well as a corporate entity to help change this outdated status quo. If you want to be involved, let me know. The work will focus on three frontiers: public research, pro bono advice and private consulting.

The bubble has reached instagram models and farmers in India. It was time to sell now and create a war chest for when buying begins again after the bubble. I have sold all my BitCoins and made a confident 100 fold profit on it. That is more than anyone can ask for.

On my way from Shanghai to Taipei, I had booked a long layover in Hong Kong, decreasing my flight costs and giving me 40€ and 18 hours to spend there. As I had not managed to get on one of the famous hiking trails last time, I took the good weather as a change to make it an early morning hike. The night before, I had arrived in my city centre hostel just about in time to get some 6 hours of sleep to take the first bus in the morning to make my way to the Dragon Back Tail, the most popular of the trails. After missing my stop, I had to get back on the other bus back. The bus driver gave me the typical confused-tourist look, but that was fine.

Arriving at the trail, I noticed that I was the first to embark on the hiking adventure that day as there were plenty of spider webs for me to pass through. I was armed with 2 litres of water and some sandwiches from Hong Kong and even China. Expected to be a 3 hour hike, I was surprisingly fast and finished after only two hours. On my way, I only passed on Chinese couple and a two buddhist nuns from South Korea who were overly excited to meet me. At the local muslim cemetery, I read a book at a scenic gazebo.

On my way back and then to the airport, I noticed quite some police presence. Only later at the airport I realised that this morning, Xi Jing Pin had traveled to HK to swear in the new governor. Luckily, it did not affect any of my travels and I was also happy to have found a geocache at the Airport! Soon, off I was only my flight to Taipei, starting my real summer adventure of 2017!

Luckily, my flight from Moscow arrived on time, so I had roughly 6 hours in Shanghai before getting on my next flight. Beforehand, I had already planned to visit the Propaganda Art Museum which I had missed last time in Shanghai. The museum is one of those weird foreigner experiences you only can get in China. Upon arriving at the housing block, before even entering the area, a guard came up to me and handed me a map to find my way to the museum which is in the basement of a residential area block. Arriving there, you will meet a women that chargers you 25CNY, roughly 4 USD, as you enter into a basement filled with posters over posters.

​The collection of 6000 posters showed a excerpt starting at around 1930 all the way up to 2000ish. While progressing through the gallery, you will slowly notice, through reading the descriptions, that back then, propaganda art was one of the very, if not the most, influential form of propaganda in China. Even more so, it changed heavily over the decades. Interestingly, already back then, China tried to influence domestic politics of foreign countries, for example when a poster depicted the anti-war movement and a call for the Chinese people to support them. Of another interests was also the development of the Chinese-Russian relationship over time. Finally, the worshipping of Mao is a common theme among the posters. This collection is unique and probably does not exist anywhere else in the world. Its message is quite powerful and I recommend anyone in Shanghai to take off some 3 hours to visit it before the government or other circumstances shut it down. I really hope they have safely stored copies outside the country.

Day 1I started off in Munich at around 10 in the morning and arrived on time in Moscow SVO at 2 in the afternoon. Immigration went smoothly, my visa for two days, which I was one of the few to actually get from the Munich Embassy itself, was accepted and officially entered Russia for the first time. First things first, I got Internet. 12Gb on 4G speed for a mere 7$. Taking the Aeroport Express directly to Belaruskia, I made my way to my “high-level” hostel (http://hostelhl.ru), located in the Moscow’s business district on the 43rd floor of one the “Empire” tower.

The whole district is apparently under constructions for more than 10 years and getting to the hostel from the underground takes up to 15 hours, because many paths are blocked and the security at the tower is also rather slow. But the view is great! I made some friends, but fairly soon went on my way to meet my friend who then gave me a quick tour of Moscow’s center. After only 90 or so minutes we were already sitting at the dinner table. It does not take much to see most of the big attractions of Moscow! Apparently 80% of the Russian GDP is made in Moscow, so what I saw on that day was the top of the top.

Another interesting observation was that Moscow was the first city I have been to that does not offer ANY English advice regarding how to use the subway system.

The dinner was good, the traditional food I got was heavy as expected and it also does taste just like you expect Russian food to taste like. We got an early night, to get some rest before touring some more attractions the next day.

Day 2My hostel offered breakfast and I definitely took advantage of it. There was also some sweet rice based oatmeal like dish wish I ate three bowls of. Some jam-sandwich and cake was there as well and a hot tea all together made a good start into the day.

First, we started with the “fake” kremlin. It is a white-painted replica of the Kremlin in the far north of Moscow. There were many sellers of all kinds of touristy goods there, but there were not annoying at as you usually experience in Asia. Although the fake Kremlin was impressive, it was still really just fake, so we continued to the Russian Space Museum. I enjoyed the visit quite a lot as I have only been to Space Museums that have worshipped the Western conquering of space and not so much the Russian side. This museum instead focused primarily on the Russian space exploration, offering a quite different, or really opposite, picture of the race for space. I highly recommend the museum. Definitely worth a visit for increasing your historic and cultural understanding. We followed up with lunch at a buffet like restaurant near the real Kremlin. Afterwards, we witnessed a celebration ceremony by the far left communist party right in front of the Kremlin. We also wanted to visit another famous church, but unfortunately, due to overcrowding, the area had been blocked off. Instead, we got some city bikes and cycled through a park as well as along the river, eventually visiting another smaller church. Funnily enough, the way the locals prayed to their catholic (?) goods in this golden church very much reminded me of the way the Chinese were praying to their Golden Budda in Hangzhou. Speaking off, in the evening we had dinner at a Chinese restaurant apparently highly frequented by Chinese diplomat officials and expats. Eventually, we ended up back at Studentskaya packing to leave and had a pizza and tea in the mall next to the main train station of Moscow. After leaving my friends to their travels to St. Petersburg, I went back to my hostel.

Day 3Once again, I had a full breakfast and then immediately got on a city bike to cycle for about two hours into Moscow City centre. There I visited the Arcade museum, a collection of not just digital, but also analog Arcade games from long time ago in the Soviet era. As historical artefact, these machines told quite some stories about Russia back in the 20th century. Afterwards, I left for SVO Airport. I checked in early, had a sandwich and then almost missed my flight as my Laptop had not adjusted its timezone!

All in all, although short in length, my visit to Moscow was a thorough experience. Moscow is definitely a unique city, but due to its climate and development, not really attractive for any expats that can also choose to live in a more sunny and hospitable city.

“Hey, there is a return trip to Zanzibar from Luxembourg for 200€, I just booked it, are you in as well?” my friend tells me over the phone.

Of course, I was in. After checking my timetables, realising I would be skipping the last week of term, which only consist of revision and useless seminars anyway, I booked my tickets as well. From the 29th we would embark on a journey from Luxembourg to Zanzibar, an island of the east African Tanzania, arriving back in Munich on the 6th of April, just about the right time to get working on my dissertation!

This is the story of two dudes that booked very cheap flights to an island, they only knew from looking it up on Google Maps — nothing more. We knew how it looked from above, and now we wanted to know how it looked from being right there. This holiday is unofficially sponsored by LuxAir or Oman Air, which made the sweet mistake of offering us an error fare and not cancelling it!

Day 1Our journey started in Luxembourg as we had to take on all flight legs of our bookings to not risk having the later parts cancelled. Therefore, we were basically forced to spent a day in Luxembourg — and I cannot complain!

On the 28th, we headed to my friends place to catch the train to Luxembourg at 3.50am in the morning from Augsburg to Saarbrücken, taking the bus there to Luxembourg. We arrived in Luxembourg with excellent weather and as we only had carry on bags, we just got two “velo” city bikes and made our way to our luxury hostel. We checked in, power napped and then started our city cruise on our 5€/24h bikes. We basically explored all there is of Luxembourg (there is not that much actually), all the bridges, all the valleys. It was obvious that money was not an issue for this small country. New and pretty buildings were being constructed or already ready to enjoy. Elderly homes were ridiculously beautiful. In the evening, we enjoyed delicious pizza with Luxembourgian beer, going to bed before midnight, because I only had had like three hours of sleep the night before.

Day 2After a decent breakfast at the hostel, we checked out, and enjoyed Kirchberg, where all the big companies and also the EU have offices, catches some sun rays and enjoyed a castle museum. We then dropped off our bikes, clocking in just below 24h hours and made our way to the Airport to our flight which would bring us back to where we just came from the day before: Munich.

The flight was less than half full and we arrived in Munich on time, making our way to my parents place to get some dinner before we would continue our flights at 9pm. This basically makes this the best layover ever as I got to take a shower at home and enjoy time with family. We got ready with some whiskey tasting and made our way to the airport. Because we only had carry on luggage and our tickets already printed, we never checked in with the airline and it turns out they wanted to see our passports. When we arrived, we apparently had already been called out over the PA six times which made us not particularly popular with the check in lady. Still, she gave us priority boarding (I don’t know why), so we got some nice seats. I had a whole four seater row for myself for this leg to Muscat in Oman and after watching La La Land basically slept all the way through.

Day 3After about 6 hours we arrived in Muscat where it was 6 in the morning, not 3am in the night as back home. Fortunately, there was free wifi so it was easy to bridge the hours of layover before we could board our flight to Zanzibar. After another 6 or so hours, we arrived in Zanzibar at 1pm. We left the airport and were immediately swamped by “official” airport personnel that tried to get us on all kinds of taxis. After getting some money from the ATM and shacking off all these really determined “agents” we decided to get a Jeep from Kibabu Cars which was the best choice for the whole trip. For 35$ a day, we had a drivable safe which could takes us across almost all terrain any time we wanted.

After getting some petrol and totally getting embarrassed by the petrol station manager that had to show us how to drive an automatic car, we made our way south towards the Uzi island. We got close, but it turns out that the street to Uzi gets flooded on high tide, so we had to reverse and route to an alternative beach.

We arrived there and had a nice swim to which about 10 teens joined us, seemingly making fun of us. They pretended not to know any English, but they did. We also got to eat our watermelon and then drove our way east in the sunset.

This night we stayed at Paje, at a very Western hostel called, new Teddy’s place. It had a bar and barracks with 8 beds each to sleep in. We got some very nice dinner, Seafood nasi goreng, for about 6$ and joined the people at the bar. There were plenty of Germans, but also Indians, Americans, Polish people; Cubans, Venezuelans and Lebanese. While my friend got an early sleep in, I joined the fun crowd for a long night of beach partying. I tried all the beers and also the famous “Konyagi” gin. After a midnight swim, we had a short football game and then went to the local Friday party night (“Jumbio?”) at the north part of Paje beach.

Someone managed to negotiate a half price entry and so we joined the people there, 50/50 local and Western people. It is hard to describe how ridiculously luxurious a party at the beach with the stars above and a bar next to it is. Long story short, we had a lot of fun and there was plenty of scandalous behaviour. Unfortunately, at the end of the night, about 4 in the morning, a local girl identified me as her former lover that “cut his hair just to hide” and would not let go of me. I literally had to run away to escape her while my friends enjoyed supporting her in her endeavour. Scratch marks were involved. As I later that week was told, this girl actually turned up at the hostel the next day to look for me, but luckily I was on a trip to the south at that point already.

Day 4I had pancakes at 10am with whoever survived the night before and after a quick swim in the sea, we made our way south with a German friend we met the night before. We stopped at an abanded beach, got some shades under some rocks while discussing the political issues of Africa (these discussion are inevitable, but also never go anywhere really). At the most southern part, we had a walk in into the sea. These are the moments where you realise how valuable a Jeep (or a bike) is when backpacking as you can explore so many more places than just by public transport. Back at Paje, we dropped off our new friend and drove further north, deciding to get dinner at the famous restaurant “The Rock”. The only way to get there is by boat as it is literally a rock in the sea. We parked our jeep while all the other guests had to arrive by taxi. We definitely felt cool. We immediately got seats and ordered some cocktails and then food. It was amazing. We enjoyed the sunset while having some of the best African food one can imagine. Later we got some desserts, moved to some more comfortably beachy seats and enjoyed spicy tea until they kicked us out because they were closing.

Instead of getting a hostel, we decided to sleep on the beach in Paje tonight. So we drove back down there, parked our car next to the hostel, zipped up warm, got a bottle of water and our watermelon knife and then laid down on the stretches of a local resort for the night, burying the car keys in the sand next to an Umbrella. I did not sleep that night. Every know and then a dark figure would pass and because there had been robberies on the southern part of that beach before, I just could not go to sleep. Instead, I occasionally would take a walk along the beach and enjoy the stars until eventually the sun would rise.

Day 5We jumped into the water and when the sun had all risen, we got back to the car at like 6.30am and started our tour to get north to Nungwi, the northern most city on Zanzibar. On the way, we passed a local turtles conservatory which was way to expensive so we left. We also got a pineapple and ate it at the entrance of an extremely old and rusty resort near Chwaka. Further north, we passed a beach with plenty of resorts and just walked in. It was apparently solely filled with Italians and it felt really awful. We also observed the weird appearance of old Italian ladies walking around with local 20 year old guys. If anyone knows why exactly this is so, please let me know, we have some guesses, too.

Eventually, we ended up in front of a Villa complex at noon and had one of the most awful overheated power naps. We then walked onto a beach where someone offered us snorkelling near the Mnemba island. We did not plan to do snorkeling, but after some negotiating, we decided to go with it and it was a good choice. This was my first time proper snorkelling and it was very enjoyable. The riff did not look too exciting but it still was quite a lot of fun! After some payment issues, we headed up north in Nungwi, we got a totally overpriced room with Jumbo brothers and enjoyed a burger before we went to bed.

Day 6We got some omelettes at 10am, enjoyed the beautiful local beach for a bit, seeing all the resorts such as the Hilton Double Tree and then made our way back south. Immediately outside of Nungwi, we saw a little path which promised a cave and eventually went on a cave tour. Zanzibar has caves, who knew! They apparently were also used as hiding place during the revolution (or something). Right after, we had the best encounter with the corrupt police on Zanzibar of the whole trip.

We were going down into a small valley village, actually only driving about 30kmh as we were looking for a place to get lunch, when we were stopped by a police check point. I parked at the curb and a police man came up to the passenger window. “Do you know how fast you were going?” (with a broad African broken English accent) he asked. “maximum of 60kmh, because that is the limit here” I answered. He then said I was going to fast, and that I was going 52kmh in a 40kmh zone (these do not exist as far as I checked). He also said he had us on his radar machine and then asked me to park on the left and to get out of the car, which starts the most strange encounter I will have with police ever.

He then asked my to read out the licence plate number and also the name on my driving licence. My friend then asked if we actually could see the evidence and the police man assured us that we can do all that in just a minute. He then also gave me the road laws to read, so I could see that I was threatened with jail if I would not pay a fine of a minimum of 75$ dollars. After realising that all this seemed a bit fishy and knowing that I actually did not go above 40kmh and that the radar machine was actually never pointed at us, I tried my negational luck.

I asked him for evidence and then told him that I would need to call my lawyer (I was actually planning to use our rental guy as our “lawyer”). This already seemingly made him feel a bit awry. I then continued to tell him that I will have my lawyer come down here to validate the evidence (which obviously did not exist). After further chit chat he gave me a choice: either I would have to pay the fine or I would get a warning he would need to get from his supervisor which was 100 meter away. I asked him what that warning was, but he did not really answer clearly.

So I said “I rather want a warning than jail”. “Are you sure you want a warning?” he then asked me, “Do you even know what a warning is?” “It still sounds better than jail, so yes”. So he gave me a warning. Sounds like a joke, right? Well, it’s true. Obviously, everyone was “happy” and “laughing” at this point and he made my friend promise to check my speed when driving (this really must have been a joke). Ultimately, I asked for his name and he then asked for my name, which clearly shows that he could not care less, because he just had written it down on his paper. We shook hands and went each our own ways. The police, your friend and supporter, not in Zanzibar, though.

Anyway, we then drove to something called “state farm”, passing the Zanzibar sugar factory plant and then had a little power nap in a jungle behind a church. We wanted to catch the sunset on the west coast, so we drove there. But at all these dead end streets to the sea, we only saw hotel resorts. Eventually, we knocked on the door of one of them and asked if they served dinner, they actually let us in and so we just walked straight to the beach which had an amazing pier. We enjoyed the sunset there all the way to the end, then got some dinner from a street shop and then set up our jeep to sleep in front of another resort for the night. Which was a bad idea.

The jeep would heat up so fast and after trying all kind of methods, open windows etc. we settled on turning on the AC every two hours. So there we were, in the middle of nowhere. An observer would have seriously questioned their sanity if they saw a jeep turning on in the middle of the night, blasting the AC for minutes just to turn off again. But we survived, we were not robbed and we head of to Mangapwani beach at 5am (with basically no sleep).

Day 7When we arrived, we saw a weird happening taking place, where basically the whole village was streaming to the beach where about 10 fisher boats were unloading their catch from the night before. While they were selling their fish, we enjoyed the show with a breakfast water melon. Afterwards, we went a bit more north to see the former slave chambers, which unfortunately were closed. Walking down the close beach, we encountered a white girl practicing kick boxing with 5 local guys at 7am on the beach. Dead end’s never fail to surprise. At the other side of the beach, we spotted an abandoned cafe where we found a lonely guy. He did not stop talking Swahili to us and eventually got a friend who spoke English. We ordered tea with this random stranger and he actually got us some tea at 7.30am in the morning out of frickin nowhere.

This was our last day with the jeep and we drove it south to Zanzibar City where we would return it. Before, we toured some old World War 2 bunkers where we also encountered a stoned couple from Belarus. We checked into a place with really good internet in Stone town, dropped off the car, and as it did not stop raining we just stayed in that night, only going outside for dinner at Lukmaan, a really good restaurant with excellent smoothies.

Day 8We woke up at 11am, got breakfast, again at Lukmaan and took a boat tour to Prison Island, a place located about 3-4kms off the coast, which just really is not exciting. It was really disappointing, so we left back early. On the plus side, we bumped into our friends from our first night at Paje hostel and they had some more friends with them as well. We agreed to meet that night (and we actually eventually did). Back in Stone town, we visited the former slave market, a historically important part of Zanzibar with a proper museum. Back at dinner at Lukmaan, we bumped into the Paje crew again and some of them were couch surfing. With their host, we eventually ended up at a local bar called Tatu, where we enjoyed the last night before we headed to the airport at 3am in the morning. I got into a chat with a local prison guard who was one of the few genuinely nice Zanzibarians I met over the last days. He grew up near Stone town, became a certified carpenter and now has four kids. He agreed to drive us to the airport which was really nice. At the airport, we luckily got through security early and checked in early as well. I managed to buy the last bottle of Konyagi for friends back home and also was able to get it through security in Muscat which is not a certain thing!

Day 9We boarded our plane to Munich at about 1pm and safely arrived in Munich at about 7pm.

SummaryThis was my second Africa experience. It was much different as I actually engaged with the local people. Overall, we were very lucky not to get robbed or involved in any bigger issues. The jeep was an amazing idea and I want to do more trips like these, maybe on a bike the next time. Zanzibar is a little island and one can feel that vibe. The biggest lesson we learned is that every dead end treasures a surprise. Without the jeep we would have missed so many great stories, but with the jeep we were able to explore so many places we would have not be able to got to otherwise. It certainly was not a cheap choice, but it was definitely effective! Unfortunately, as soon as people realise you have a car, they assume you have money to throw around and all. Having a car in Zanzibar means being rich, which is true, but it lets the people assume that they can ask you everything and anything.

Generally, the island has all the development issues many other African countries have as well. Education apart from a bit of English is lacking. Many people cannot count simple numbers in their head so they use their phone, sometimes the wrong way. It obviously is hard to maintain a living that way. Corruption is eminent. There is small corruption like the police story we lived through, but certainly there is also big corruption which is harder to see. People are also afraid to discuss it in public, which makes a democratic change even harder. On top of that, people are extremely poor.

Lastly, negotiating is essential with all interactions where they assume you have money. They will ALWAYS start with a ridiculous price, because they know that some people will just take it. Obviously, that is a smart thing to do, but when you know the real price and they do not want to accept the real market price, everyone is just wasting time. I understand long negotiation procedures when there is a public project or a joint venture, but for a bottle of water, negotiating for minutes is a waste of everyones time.

Overall, I recommend Zanzibar. It has great beaches. There are many ways to explore it, with a Jeep or by public transport or in a resort. But a resort would just be boring. Zanzibar only makes sense for a short times as well. It is an island and it is limited. I will not be coming back for a long time. I drove through all parts in less than six days. It’s cute but there is not an endless string of things to see. It ends, very soon.

Roughly nine months ago, I set on my rather spontaneous journey to China with the British Council exchange program and got a lot of first hand experience in Zhejiang, Shanghai and Hong Kong. It also sparked my interest in China as a whole, so I explored its culture and language a bit more. My current opinion is that China will be one if not the only political, economic and technological leader of the 21st century. Therefore, I see the potential for a big pay-off of a dedicated time investment, which so far has played out in the following ways, starting with the basics and then going into the specifics:

Language

Language can be a big barrier to any research into a country. Therefore, I have taken part in language courses and am currently halfway through my third course on Chinese Mandarin. I am starting to gain a good feeling for it, but I am far from being able to express complex matters. Hopefully, in September I will continue in further studies. A year in China is a quite likely option as well, sometime in the next years.

History, Culture and Philosophy

I have read two books about the Chinese history and politics so far (see: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1a9typR7SqrqfDdKxEYZwDybOKOLGK7TWzX-t-3mbCYQ/edit#gid=0) and I will also leave it at that for now while I am exploring more the Chinese Philosophy, coming back later when I have a better feeling of the cultural background. On the Philosophy side I am currently reading a 300 pager on the history which nicely summarises all the important parts that influence the Chinese society. On the culture part, I am trying to converse with as much Chinese nationals as possible.

Politics

Chinese politics is pretty much the epitome of studying Chinese language, history, culture and philosophy. Therefore, I will save this one up for when I am more confident in my knowledge and skills, but I definitely see it is a the long-term goal.

Economics, Investment and Business

Having a natural interest in everything business related and especially internet business related, I will start to research well known companies such as Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba, but also less well known one’s. I have discussed this step with several people of which each has raised several concerns like the political complexity or the investment complexity regarding the legal matters for example as a foreigner etc., but I think that working through these challenges will result in a pay-off on the long term. I have the time and the resources, so I can afford to experiment.

Science and Technology

Finally, I will take a look at the development of technology as well the scientific progress made in China. Right now, most Chinese travel to the West to get a “decent” education, but things will change and there will be a global academic power shift, but what kind, potentially towards China, that is what I want to understand better.